A blog for foster parents and those interested in becoming foster parents

Two Enemies, Part 1: PRIDE

You’re two worst enemies are: Pride and Expectations. Either one of these will knock you so far off your game that failure will seem a mere formality. Over the next two posts I will tackle both of these enemies as they relate to foster parenting.

God’s word in Proverbs has several things to say about pride. As one can imagine, all negative.

“King Peacock 5” by Arthur

Proverbs groups pride with arrogance, evil behavior, and perverse speech (8:13). In a word, pride is evil. It is responsible for evil results and is evil in itself.

If your motivation is from pride you won’t accomplish any good. Certainly you will not help anyone. Worse, you take an already damaged, abandoned kid and make it all worse by proving to them once again that adults do not care about them and can’t be counted upon for anything. That would be actual, real, unmitigated evil.

Pride leads to failure (11:2), and ultimately destruction just as it did before the Fall (16:18). Unfortunately, it can be to someone else’s destruction that your pride leads. As a foster parent you will, plainly speaking, fail the child or children.

I know of a real case of a couple who took in three children and now, even though all three are still “in the system” they no longer live with these people. They did nothing to help the kids but they received plenty of pats on the back for “doing good” in the eyes of others and they have received their reward (see Matthew 6:1-6); which was their point.

Those pats on the back, by the way, come from well meaning friends, family, and co-workers. These are dangerous if you let them go to your head: you’ll want to guard against taking it all in without a healthy dose of salt and humility. Be gracious and polite, and tell them Who you are doing this for.

It will flat out prevent us from even seeking it. Looking back over this year I know we could not have done this without the wisdom of others. Nor could we have done this while sticking with what we know and telling ourselves the kids just “were not getting it“.

We had to be willing to adjust strategies and approaches when we found something wasn’t working. Pride, if we had let it get in the way, would have stopped us from even considering what we were doing wasn’t working.

Pride comes before the Fall. Or, in this context: Pride comes before the Failure (23:23).

Don’t let this happen. This is the most important thing God has called you to do. Seek His wisdom and remember what He thinks of children.